The irony of the CPS2 fan is that it wouldn’t be necessary if they hadn’t put the boards inside a plastic case! Some amount of air flow is needed, just to keep the air from heat saturation inside there. You don’t want to put much confidence in ambient air flow in/out of the vents in the case.
UD-CPS2 requires air movement over the internal DC-DC power supply, which actually takes the physical place of the original mono audio amplifier. That mono audio amp is the reason for the vents on the front left side of the case, so it generates a fair amount of heat. Since it was only used for the JAMMA interface, I removed it entirely and the DC-DC power supply can take advantage of that nicely vented area.
-ud
tonnes of bad ass motherfuckers like run their boards with no fans for hours with no problem. i wouldnt do it on a board inside a cab or on a overly hot day and i’m not telling you to remove them but yeah, they’re not really that neccessary
Last couple months I’ve mostly been getting my inventory in order (got a new inventory management system that will help greatly in staying sane) and ordering more parts. I ran into a hiccup with my last PCB order where the manufacturer sent my boards to the wrong customer. I won’t go into details, but that cost me a few weeks.
I’ve sent e-mail/PM updates to everyone scheduled for a mid-October build.
-ud
I put in a little time on it last night. Still waiting on some parts for my next UD-CPS2 build-fest, so I may be able to knock it out soon.
Still need to update the layout to reflect the last changes made to the UD-CPS2 interface. Gonna add some features, too, like selectable pull ups for interfacing the board with different setups (not everyone will be using this with arcade boards), player select jumpers (will tell the host to set LEDs on your joystick to which controller port is being used), and extra connections for remote wiring of indicator LED (for people not mounting the board right next to the exterior of their case).
-ud
The arcade where I run the monthly ST tournament is interested in these. They were thinking about putting a USB connector on the control panel or something to allow the occasional pad player to join in.
Would that be possible to use the standard stick and buttons, but have it so a USB peripheral would work when connected without having to flip any switches? Something like an Imp autodetect? (I’m looking forward to this as I suspect I could charge my phone while sat at a cab LOL)
You should just be able to wire the decoder’s output to where the controls connect, though if someone decides to be a jerk and press something on the control panel, it’ll interfere. If that really matters (probably not, ST players are chill) use a switch to kill GND to that player’s controls.
Actually, it’s good for anyone who prefers their own controller! Fubarduck freaked out when he saw my UD-CPS2 demo @ EVO 2012 because he wanted to put these in his cabs @ Arcade UFO.
As Adam mentioned, my converter can be wired directly to the buttons in the cab. It would also be the easiest access, as arcade ops need to open control panels semi-regularly for maintenance anyways.
-ud
Great, I’m thinking about having a USB port near the control panel in one of my EGRET IIs so while there’s a one player panel mounted there, a second player can join with a pad or arcade stick. While I have a two player panel for my cabinets, my youngest daughter is a lefty, so it’d be great to hook up her lefty stick when she wants to play Puzzle Bobble with her sister.
After a thorough wash, they’ll be ready for faceplate mounts and power jacks. The tools there are what I use to do the case prep. That case milling jig is a the most valuable tool for this project. I would stop building UD-CPS2s without it.
-ud
Apologies for the double post, but wanted to bump this as I have an actual suggestion. I was talking with some friends in the GMC facebook group and we were chatting about custom sticks and going through the motions of button config and I read a post a little earlier where you were talking about the behaviour for the controller LEDs (eg green for connected, flashing green for config mode, red for a problem etc).
Not sure if it’s worth implementing this, but I thought about pulsing the LED to show which input you are currently mapping. Eg flash it red once and have it off for a second to show you are inputting jab, have it flash twice and off for a second to show strong, three times for fierce, and the same with kicks but with a different colour. So something like x_____x_____x_____x for jab, xx_____xx_____xx_____xx for strong etc.
Oh, maybe you could flash the LED quickly 4 or 5 times if the UD CPS2 detects a stick it has a built in button mapping for so players know they are good to go without button checks, and maybe for unrecognised devices, to automatically enter setup mode for that stick?
I also see Toodles suggested having some button combination to access the test menu via the control, so I’d like to second that as I’d prefer people not to be messing with the unit. I’ll probably provide USB extension cables to act as quick disconnects in case someone trips on a modded stick that doesn’t have such a feature, plus it saves the face plate getting scratched up.
Uh oh yeah, how much power do the USB ports provide, is it the standard 500ma? I have a stick with a remora and 6x Arceye 3 that draws about 120ma when they are all lit up, and I just wondered if that is safe to connect or not.
Sorry man, I know I’m just creating work for you now and you have enough of a job on trying to keep up with demand!
Interesting idea, but it would actually be quicker to just do a complete remap (which only takes a moment) than to sit there staring at an LED trying to count blinks and figure out which button you are on. At this point, I don’t have any good reason to use lengthy LED blink codes (reminiscent of “beep codes” for PC motherboards when something is amiss).
That’s been in place for a while now. Not sure that current UD-CPS2 owners use it, but it’s in there. There are some cumbersome caveats that are based on the game menu itself that are outside of my control. Example:
P1 or P2 can enter the Test menu by holding all 6 action buttons + Coin & Start (my design)
Only P1 can navigate the menu. (Capcom)
If the sub-menu items are entered, some of them (including Input Test menu) require both P1 & P2 to hit start at the same time (Capcom)
As long as both players understand what’s going on, it’s not bad, but otherwise it can be confusing.
500mA. I tried to protect the USB port pretty well, so you can dead short 5V and some other nasty things without hurting it.
-ud
I just though this up, but I do see using your USB interface for adapting sticks to next gen consoles.
pair one of your USB interfaces with a next gen game pad. You have to pad hack to force common ground
(I am hoping someone makes a universal PCB that forces a non-common ground set up to be used in common ground mods)
Yeah seeing Dev’s post on how someone got the PS4 game pad to work on a x360 got me an idea.
I know its not the most elegant solution but I was thinking if we can hobble together a comon ground adapter like how the six axis adapter or leo board worked for a universal setup paired with your USB interface, we can wire this up to next gen game pad PCBs and we got a all-in one solution for next gen consoles.
Hey Brian, finally i was able to test the UCDS on my 1084S monitor. The good thing is it works, the bad thing is I only get black and white, no colour. When I plug the cable into a crt TV or my LCD it works pretty good (in case I won`t play on and LCD anyway). Are you able to shoot a photo of your 1084s backside ? So i can compare and verify if i got a different version of yours or not. By the way this an amazing part of work, like it should have always been like that ! Thanks again mate !
I had this problem with Don’s supergun awhile back. It turns out that the video encoder on the supergun has a switch on it whose sole function, as far as I can tell, is to add color or not. The game ran in black and white for about two weeks (which looked cool), but eventually we flipped the switch and the colors came back. Bizarre.
